Global Model That Measures The Social Inclusivity Of Municipalities: Inclusive Municipal Governance Report Card

The Inclusive Municipal Governance Scorecard (KBYK-Karne), which is the product of nearly a year's work with the cooperation of Argüden Governance Academy and KA.DER, was published at the end of last year. KRGK offers a global and unique model for municipalities with a report card model that makes it different from its counterparts. The authors of the publication, İnan İzci from Argüden Governance Academy and Ayşe Kaşıkırık from the Association for Supporting Women Candidates (KA.DER), stated that the report card can be easily used by the municipality, NGOs and citizens, and they hope that the civil society, local government, academia and media will show interest to it. . ”

Why should municipalities prioritize governance and inclusion principles? 

i.i: Municipalities are actually the closest public institutions to the citizens… Institutions that touch the daily lives of women and respond to their different needs… With the awareness of this, we decided to work with KA-DER for municipalities. The KBYK has been prepared to make the institutional structures, operations and policies of the municipalities more inclusive. The KBYK is a tool that shows whether the municipality identifies women’s problems, needs and demands as a data basis…

A.K.: In this study, we also included examples of good practice in ensuring gender equality and increasing inclusiveness of municipalities in Turkey and around the world. For example, Şişli Municipality and Beşiktaş Municipality seize 50 percent of the salaries of men who use violence against their spouses. Gaziantep Metropolitan Municipality is trying to pave the way for women to equally access all opportunities in employment by signing the Equality at Work Policy Document.

What were your concrete goals in preparing the KBKY? Why did you feel the need to prepare this publication? 

I.I: 1- We carried out this study so that municipalities that provide services by the votes and taxes of female and male citizens give more importance to social equality. It was prepared to work effectively and on-site with the KBYK, which is more suitable for the needs of girls and women in the institutional structure and functioning of municipalities. Thus, in addition to meeting the needs of girls and women more effectively at the local level, supporting women’s participation in social and political life. As a whole, it was to contribute to gender equality and improved quality of life.

Another aspect of the KBYK was to ensure that the citizens and NGOs have a guiding tool to monitor, evaluate and, where necessary, provide advocacy or cooperation in the field of gender in their respective municipalities. What does KBYK basically do? It sets out a number of indicators to ensure the equality of a municipality with women and men in all areas such as participation, representation, resource utilization, decision and service provision. For example, what percentage of the money a municipality has spent for women or what percentage of it did the municipality spend on services that touch women?   At this point, when we talk about ensuring gender equality, it is necessary to consider the financial dimension and the service dimension. The report card actually gives you a little awareness of that.

Let’s give another example: There is an elderly woman who lives alone and needs care. However, he does not come to the municipality and ask for help. Well, as a municipality, do you identify people in similar situations and actively serve them? Can you identify their needs? At the moment, the KBYK is actually aiming to increase inclusiveness for all, but it is mainly emphasizing the equality of women and girls.

A.K: We know that women are underrepresented in the decision-making mechanisms of municipalities in all structures, units and administrative functions. What we want with the report card is to be a driving factor for women to communicate their needs to the competent authorities firstly and to ensure that this model works by communicating the needs of citizens to the municipalities.

How does the report card provide this? In fact, it enables us to easily measure the whole system and to see the result clearly. We can think of it as follows: the municipality offers various services to the city center to the countryside on its border and they also have to offer these services. But the question is: did the municipality really do these services according to the needs? Are the needs of different segments taken into account in the design of these services? Are measurement and evaluation tools used? Answering these and similar questions, the report card reveals a holistic picture.  With this report card, you can see the shortcomings.

A Unique Model for Measuring the Inclusiveness of Municipalities

How and on what issues do municipalities, NGOs and citizens benefit from the KBYK?

A.K: A report card is a unique model for measuring the inclusiveness of a municipality with concrete indicators based on system, integrity and data. All the activities of a municipality, small and independent, for the empowerment of women and girls in the local area can be measured by this model at a single point. A holistic picture can be obtained and evaluated.

We can also think as “What are the missing parts in a puzzle or in the big picture? At which point are there more bottlenecks? How can that bottleneck be developed? A municipality can make a self-criticism by seeing the missing points in the whole picture with this report card. He can find its missing and strong points. It can determine which points it should contact more. The report card gives that perspective.

At the same time, we know that equality of women and men is a constitutional right…It is a legal obligation for the municipalities to ensure this… In addition, ensuring gender equality is an indispensable element of democracy and sustainable development. For these reasons, the municipalities have great responsibilities in this regard… This report card is a model that allows the municipality to make a comparison both at national and local level while performing these tasks.

İ.İ: From the point of view of citizens and NGOs, any citizen or NGO “what is the work done by municipalities in this area? The question of “What can they do? is a tool to evaluate the question… We aim to use the Report Card primarily for mapping and measuring its inclusiveness for women. For example, a female citizen who wants to be active in this issue can easily understand what services a municipality does using the indicators provided in the report card. When we look from the point of view of NGOs, the report card gives a holistic picture in terms of evaluating what municipalities should do to ensure women’s needs and gender equality and it serves as a guiding tool.

How can municipalities use the report card as a tool and model? 

İ.İ: Report card is a tool that makes the work of municipalities quite easy:

1-This publication provides a concrete guide for municipalities on what they can do from different principles such as participation, representation, equality in resource use, responsibility and fairness… A publication that contains answers to many of the questions that may be asked by the mayor or bureaucrats working for the municipality. It is a holistic spectacle for what is not done or what should be prioritized.

2- What work can be done in the local of a municipality to empower women and ensure gender equality? What should be given priority? A report card is a tool that guides you to provide much more specific answers to these questions…

3- Another point is that it is an assumption that is generally not addressed, the assumption is that the municipal services or resources will equally touch the lives of women as they are more involved in representation and participation processes. Hovewer, there is no guarantee. Moreover, well-intentioned efforts may not produce the desired results. To give another example, women can lead to overlooking other areas that require very good work in a related field. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the concrete situation from discourse on the basis of facts and to aim for continuous development. For example, each woman has a different need. Do municipalities provide services to each women’s group in line with a certain priority and offer their resources in a balanced way? In answering this question, the KBYK may be useful for a holistic look.

A Holistic Tool In Gender Equality

A.K.: We emphasized that the report card is a holistic tool for ensuring the gender equality. The report card serves as a tool that allows us to see transparently whether the municipality actually applies the equality provisions it has committed to and whether it makes a fair budget distribution.

Using these scorecard indicators, any citizen, municipal employee or an NGO can objectively achieve the same results by checking with the data that a municipality publicly shares. In other words, anyone can always test and confirm the scientific validity and reliability of this report card.

What approach does this give us? Currently, access to data is an important problem… Our aim here is also to encourage municipalities to transparently share their data with the public. We especially hope that the data on gender equality will be shared… What does this mean? How many women have benefited from the services? How many men and boys have benefited? How many complaints have you received from female citizens? How many complaints have you received from male citizens? By asking similar questions, the data on gender-sensitive analysis can be tested with this report card.   In short, the localization of gender equality serves as a holistic tool in the institutionalization of the entire municipality.

KBYK As a Model That Everyone Can Easily Use

Can you give an example of how citizens can use the report card? 

A.K.: All citizens can easily use the KBYK. Because the results of the 231 indicators in the scorecard can easily be accessed by analyzing the data that can be found with a simple search, such as the annual report, strategic plan, performance program shared by a municipality publicly. The citizens can also easily use this model.

However, for example, whether a municipality has a shelter or whether a municipality has a gender distribution among the council members, whether there is an equal opportunity commission for the women and men or whether there is an equality unit, all data can be found on the municipality’s website or the reports published.

İ. İ.: Actually, anyone can use this tool. First of all, the female citizens can use it.

1. So, what does my municipality do with women? How much money does it spends? What activities can it carry out? It can detect them.
2. The women citizens who want to direct how their municipality can work better, can advocate or volunteer with this tool.

Presence Of A Limited Number Of Municipalities Providing Inclusivity 

What does an inclusive municipality do? Can you give an example of an inclusive municipality from Turkey and the world? 

A.K.: The reason we chose 2 pilot districts in our KBYK publication was that Kadıköy was among the top 3 of 39 districts of Istanbul in the Municipal Governance Report published by Argüden Governance Academy in 2018. Does the Municipality of Kadıköy and Bağcılar Municipality match the findings of the Municipal Governance Scorecard with the KRGK? We compared them and found that both municipalities were not at the desired level in achieving gender equality and they were far behind.

If we start from the design, it was observed that the needs, expectations, suggestions and opinions of female citizens were not included in the processes at all and we have seen that this data is also not shared on the municipal websites during the preparation of plans and programs of 2 municipalities. Both municipalities provide small services to women in achieving gender equality, but are also rated low in the Report Card results because they are independent and do not overlap with each other.

We didn’t surprise with the results. We know that a small number of municipalities in Turkey and the world are at a point that has really achieved inclusion… Women are generally under-represented in decision-making mechanisms both in terms of participation, implementation and service. Since their decision-making mechanisms and power to influence decisions are not sufficient, we have constantly emphasized inclusiveness that we desire in this work and that we want to create pressure.

While preparing the KBYK, we looked at it positively; “This is who they are in terms of equality. We do not criticize anybody, we do not judge with different accusations ” We want to be the driving force for their correction in the coming years by revealing the missing points in the development.

İ.İ.: In addition to this, there is no similar tool in the world that puts a female citizen in the center and approaches it with a holistic perspective. After we did this study, the United Nations invited us and we explained this model to the participants coming from different countries. They were also very pleased. The local governments are institutions all over the world. In local governments-municipalities, there was no holistic and data-based model which interests in every area in such a concrete way.

Although there are many tools and approaches available to the local governments, there was no tool based on a comprehensive and objective basis as much as the KBYK. In this aspect, we have achieved a global innovation with the KBYK and the Karne model we prepared in cooperation with KA-DER. Here, our main goal is to serve women to have a better and higher quality in their daily life… We can charge on the municipalities until a certain point because so far the knowledge of other stakeholders, discourse and approach there is a need to give more concreteness… Therefore, KBYK,  civil society, academia and the media may guide the efforts. We hope that these studies will lead to a more detailed and holistic approach to gender equality in municipalities.

1. K.: And we hope that women are equally represented in the decision-making mechanisms of municipalities and encouraged by the municipalities in decision-making processes. In addition, we expect that women will become demanding from the municipalities to ensure gender equality for them.